Tokyo:
M3 Neony is one among the series of robotic children produced by the JST Erato Asada Project at Osaka University.
The robot derives its name from the word 'neonate' which means new born child.
Despite the name however, Neony is considerably more mobile than a newborn baby.
Neony can pull itself up to a standing position, turn over and crawl, simulating motor-skills more characteristic of a six to nine month old baby than a new born.
Accompanying software designed by the project team, the baby robot is equipped with two video cameras, two microphones in the robot's ears, 22 high torque motors and 90 tactile sensors on its skin.
But why design a robotic baby?
Professor Asada Minoru, the director of the project team, explains that their ultimate goal is to create intelligent robots that can live with humans.
"Our aim is to create intelligent robots that can live with humans. To achieve this we have to understand humans themselves. In order to do this, we are suggesting a new approach to the problem in which we use robots to further our understanding of humans. This project focuses particularly on babies and children. By creating robots based on assumptions about child development, we are conducting scientific research from this perspective," he says.
In order to achieve this goal it is necessary to expand our understanding of humans.
In what he describes as a "new approach", rather than simply using humans as models for the development of robots, Asada believes that creating robots "based on assumptions about child development" will further our understanding of humans.
Besides Neony, the project team has built a number of robotic children.
These have included Neony's predecessor, Synchy, short for Sychronous Communication.
This robot combined speech and object recognition and was programmed to communicate both verbally and non- verbally with multiple subjects.
The most sophisticated robot of the series is Kindy.
Around the size of a five-year-old, the robot can emulate emotions through a range of facial expressions.
Professor Ishiguro Hiroshi, famous for his Geminoid double, is also a key member of the Asada project team.
He acknowledges that whereas human babies develop cognitive and motor skills very quickly, simulating these abilities in robots is extremely challenging for the engineers.
"We can make the hardware relatively quickly, but the software determining how the movement of this complex body is controlled takes a great deal of time. It takes a tremendous amount of computing power. On the other hand, human babies and children learn to control their highly complex bodies in an incredibly short time," he says.
However, Ishiguro sees resolving the software challenges that each project presents as "improving the performance of robots."
"Creating software in order to imitate child development that embodies abilities expressed by children we are simultaneously improving the performance of the robots."
He also says he believes that the work the project team is doing will help scientists studying cognition or psychology to verify hypotheses about child development.
"So we are attempting to understand the extremely complex process of human development through the creation of robots. Scientists studying the brain, cognition or psychology, have presented various hypotheses about development. Verification of these hypotheses are extremely difficult. For one thing, they require constant observation. If however we create robots with programmes based on these hypotheses then we think that through the robots we may be able to create methods of verification," he says.
Although growing in sophistication, the field of humanoid robotics is still in its infancy.
How far the project's robots will actually help to unravel the mysteries of human development remains to be seen.
The robot derives its name from the word 'neonate' which means new born child.
Despite the name however, Neony is considerably more mobile than a newborn baby.
Neony can pull itself up to a standing position, turn over and crawl, simulating motor-skills more characteristic of a six to nine month old baby than a new born.
Accompanying software designed by the project team, the baby robot is equipped with two video cameras, two microphones in the robot's ears, 22 high torque motors and 90 tactile sensors on its skin.
But why design a robotic baby?
Professor Asada Minoru, the director of the project team, explains that their ultimate goal is to create intelligent robots that can live with humans.
"Our aim is to create intelligent robots that can live with humans. To achieve this we have to understand humans themselves. In order to do this, we are suggesting a new approach to the problem in which we use robots to further our understanding of humans. This project focuses particularly on babies and children. By creating robots based on assumptions about child development, we are conducting scientific research from this perspective," he says.
In order to achieve this goal it is necessary to expand our understanding of humans.
In what he describes as a "new approach", rather than simply using humans as models for the development of robots, Asada believes that creating robots "based on assumptions about child development" will further our understanding of humans.
Besides Neony, the project team has built a number of robotic children.
These have included Neony's predecessor, Synchy, short for Sychronous Communication.
This robot combined speech and object recognition and was programmed to communicate both verbally and non- verbally with multiple subjects.
The most sophisticated robot of the series is Kindy.
Around the size of a five-year-old, the robot can emulate emotions through a range of facial expressions.
Professor Ishiguro Hiroshi, famous for his Geminoid double, is also a key member of the Asada project team.
He acknowledges that whereas human babies develop cognitive and motor skills very quickly, simulating these abilities in robots is extremely challenging for the engineers.
"We can make the hardware relatively quickly, but the software determining how the movement of this complex body is controlled takes a great deal of time. It takes a tremendous amount of computing power. On the other hand, human babies and children learn to control their highly complex bodies in an incredibly short time," he says.
However, Ishiguro sees resolving the software challenges that each project presents as "improving the performance of robots."
"Creating software in order to imitate child development that embodies abilities expressed by children we are simultaneously improving the performance of the robots."
He also says he believes that the work the project team is doing will help scientists studying cognition or psychology to verify hypotheses about child development.
"So we are attempting to understand the extremely complex process of human development through the creation of robots. Scientists studying the brain, cognition or psychology, have presented various hypotheses about development. Verification of these hypotheses are extremely difficult. For one thing, they require constant observation. If however we create robots with programmes based on these hypotheses then we think that through the robots we may be able to create methods of verification," he says.
Although growing in sophistication, the field of humanoid robotics is still in its infancy.
How far the project's robots will actually help to unravel the mysteries of human development remains to be seen.
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